Ibn Khallikān was an assistant to the chief judge of Egypt until 1261, when he became qāḍī al-quḍāt (chief judge) of Damascus. He adhered to the Shāfiʿī branch of Muslim law, and for the first years had deputy judges of the other three main branches. In 1271 he was dismissed. He taught in Cairo until he regained his judgeship and returned to Damascus in 1278.

Ibn Khallikān’s fame rests on his biographical dictionary Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān (“Deaths of Eminent Men and History of the Sons of the Epoch”; trans. by Baron de Slane, Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, 1842–74). He began arranging material for it in 1256 and worked on it until 1274, continuing to improve it with marginal notes. He excluded the Prophet Muḥammad, the caliphs, and other subjects about whom adequate information already existed. Ibn Khallikān selected factual material for his biographies with intelligence and scholarship and rounded them out with poetry and anecdotes. His book is a valuable source for his contemporaries and contains excerpts from earlier biographies no longer extant.

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